According to two European officials familiar with the talks, the new proposal being floated by the government would see smaller depositors, those with up to €100,000, taxed at 3% rate—down from 6.75% as initially envisaged. Savers with €100,000 to €500,000 would be taxed at a 10% rate; and those with over €500,000 taxed at 15%, one official said.

Because the “small savers” are the ones who take to the streets, storm the banks’ doors, and riot.

Maybe the EU ought to be worrying about Putin, who’s not happy,

The deposit levy would be felt sharply by Russian financial institutions and companies which have large footholds on the island. According to Moody’s Investors Service estimates, Russian residents and institutions could lose around $2 billion if Cyprus goes ahead with this latest unconfirmed proposal to raise taxes on deposits.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has strongly criticized a proposed deposit tax in Cyprus that could cost Russian financial institutions an estimated $2 billion as “unfair” and “dangerous,” his spokesman told news agencies Monday.

“Mr. Putin said that such a decision, if adopted, would be unfair, unprofessional and dangerous,” said his spokesman Dmitry Peskov.

My fear is that governments in the US, Britain, and Europe will display similar reflexes. Indeed, they have already done so. The forced-feeding of banks with fresh capital – whether they want it or not – and the seizure of the Fannie/Freddie mortgage giants before they were in fact in trouble (in order to prevent a Chinese buying strike of US bonds and prevent a spike in US mortgage rates), shows that private property can be co-opted – or eliminated – with little due process if that is required to serve the collective welfare. This is a slippery slope.

In a speech before the Daimler Trucks North America manufacturing plant in Charlotte, N.C. today, the president delivered his answer to rising gas prices: He wants to increase the $7,500 tax credit for alternative-energy vehicles to $10,000, earmark $1 billion to reward cities that provide infrastructure for such vehicles, earmark an additional $650 million for a research program to increase the range and decrease the price of the vehicles, and repeal $4 billion of tax incentives for oil and gas companies.

General Motors has told 1,300 employees at its Detroit Hamtramck that they will be temporarily laid off for five weeks as the company halts production of the Chevrolet Volt and its European counterpart, the Opel Ampera.

“Even with sales up in February over January, we are still seeking to align our production with demand,” said GM spokesman Chris Lee.

The booby prize want to the Fiat 500 auto, which administration officials touted when they arranged for Fiat to buy the ailing Chrysler company.

“The car was expected to be a big seller, rivaling BMW’s Mini… [and] Fiat expected to sell 50,000 500s during 2011 in North America,” according to the Yahoo! Finance Top 7 list. However, “Fiat sold fewer than 12,000 [and] sales were so poor that Chrysler Group, which manages the Fiat brand in the United States, ousted U.S. chief Laura Soave this past November,” noted Yahoo.

The main draw is price. Executives say its cost of labor offers savings of 25% to 30% over the U.S. and at least 30% over Japan. Proximity to North American companies means shipments can arrive in days, not weeks, and executives can coordinate plans during working hours. Carlos Bello, head of the aerospace industry group, says the idea is to begin with parts and basic manufacturing before expanding into more advanced areas like assembly and design.

And what companies are there?

It is the latest project of Mexico’s budding aerospace industry, a sector that has averaged 20% growth the past five years while attracting the likes of engine-maker General Electric Co., Textron Inc.’s Cessna Aircraft Co. and an array of suppliers tapped by giants Boeing Co. and Airbus, a unit of European Aeronautic Defence & Space Co.

GE?

The same GE that got a $182.5 billion bailout from the Obama administration?

it happened to at least one driver of a 2011 Chevrolet Cruze compact car last month, and General Motors Corp. is recalling 2,100 of the cars as a result.

While the recall affects a relatively small number of vehicles, it is an unpleasant development for Chevrolet, which has been riding high on the success of its new small car. Chevrolet sold 50,205 Cruzes through the end of March. That’s well short of the 76,821 units Toyota sold of the Cruze’s main rival, the Corolla, but it is ahead of the 37,379 Cobalts Chevy sold in the same period. The Cruze replaced the Cobalt and is supposed to be a departure from that uninspired model.

In documents filed with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the car maker said it traced the problem with that particular car to a case in which the wrong wheel was put in a car and replaced later in the assembly process.

GM didn’t think of changing the production process to make sure the machine used to attach the steering wheel can accommodate only the correct one until after the wheel came off this vehicle. The WSJ post has over 700 comments, nearly all negative.

The authorities uncovered billions of dollars in wire transfers, traveller’s cheques and cash shipments through Mexican exchanges into Wachovia accounts. Wachovia was put under immediate investigation for failing to maintain an effective anti-money laundering programme. Of special significance was that the period concerned began in 2004, which coincided with the first escalation of violence along the US-Mexico border that ignited the current drugs war.

Criminal proceedings were brought against Wachovia, though not against any individual, but the case never came to court. In March 2010, Wachovia settled the biggest action brought under the US bank secrecy act, through the US district court in Miami. Now that the year’s “deferred prosecution” has expired, the bank is in effect in the clear. It paid federal authorities $110m in forfeiture, for allowing transactions later proved to be connected to drug smuggling, and incurred a $50m fine for failing to monitor cash used to ship 22 tons of cocaine.

More shocking, and more important, the bank was sanctioned for failing to apply the proper anti-laundering strictures to the transfer of $378.4bn – a sum equivalent to one-third of Mexico’s gross national product – into dollar accounts from so-called casas de cambio (CDCs) in Mexico, currency exchange houses with which the bank did business.

Go read the full article on the investigation and how the investigator was treated,

On 16 June Woods was told by Wachovia’s head of compliance that his latest SAR need not have been filed, that he had no legal requirement to investigate an overseas case and no right of access to documents held overseas from Britain, even if they were held by Wachovia.

Woods’s life went into freefall. He went to hospital with a prolapsed disc, reported sick and was told by the bank that he not done so in the appropriate manner, as directed by the employees’ handbook. He was off work for three weeks, returning in August 2007 to find a letter from the bank’s compliance managing director, which was unrelenting in its tone and words of warning.

The letter addressed itself to what the manager called “specific examples of your failure to perform at an acceptable standard”. Woods, on the edge of a breakdown, was put on sick leave by his GP; he was later given psychiatric treatment, enrolled on a stress management course and put on medication.